Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng -- The Early Years

I mentioned in a post earlier this week that I grew up in a small town. I actually got emails about that! Apparently, my sophisticated, cosmopolitan mannerisms seem at odds with a small town background. While I admit to having adapted to big city life remarkably well, my small town past helped make me what I am today. Namely, a paranoid neurotic with a nearly painful physical addiction to every legal stimulant and a few marketed as "Herbal Energy Boosters" that slip (for now) under the radar of the FDA.

I grew up in Post, Texas, which had a population of less than 4,000. Post is named for its founder C.W. Post, who is known mostly today for Cocoa Pebbles. Back in the day, C.W. Post was a breakfast visionary. He invented Elijah's Manna (which was later renamed Post Toasties) and Grape Nuts, which were probably named between a couple of Mr. Post's frequent visits to the Sanitarium. Talked to him, the Grape Nuts did. They told him things. Things about the end times.

Before his apparent suicide in 1914, C.W. Post also invented a breakfast drink called Postum. It is a (shudder) caffeine-free "coffee alternative" even available today, though the ingredients are different. On store shelves today, Postum contains wheat and molasses, mostly, but the original formula was reported to contain these with the addition of cocaine and a couple of rain forest opiates -- All in the interest of eliminating caffeine. The marketing even featured a caffeine-fueled super villain with a jet pack:

"Mr. Coffee Nerves" was apparently (if these comics are to be believed) responsible for the complete destruction of many, many families.

Whatever Mr. Coffee Nerves was really about, C.W. Post founded what he envisioned a "Caffeine-free Utopia" in the West Texas desert. And that is where I grew up. In hindsight, I suppose that may explain a lot.

Please feel free to email me any and all questions about my various psychological issues. I'm comfortable enough answering just about anything thanks to the power of caffeine. Let's get better together, dear readers. Dr. Phil would be so proud.

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At last count, 3,299 Diet Coke Reward Points were hanging out in my account. While most of this number can be held almost directly responsible for the damage to my own internal systems, a number of people have been regularly emailing me codes in an attempt to keep my kidneys working.

My dad sends codes and has ever since he found out about this project. They come in emails marked as sent via a BlackBerry handheld device, which suggests they were emailed while away from the computer doing something awesome or at least that the urgency merits navigating the tiny thumb-cramping keyboards on those things. I really appreciate it either way.

Also, my friend Ted sends codes -- though he says the true credit for them goes to his daughter for reminding him to save them.

This is especially neat when one considers that I've been getting codes from them for months and she just recently asked (through Ted) what the end goal was supposed to be.

I replied that the end goal was a Nintendo Wii but that it would run just about 7,000 points.

However, I was inspired by the question to visit the Coke Rewards site to take a look for myself just to remind myself why I'm drinking enough Diet Coke that I sweat aspartame and caramel color, why I only sleep 28 hours a week, and why (I hesitate to admit) I have to go #1 more often than a whole group of third grade girls on a bus tour of the Catskills. I rarely go to the official site since they switched to a bloated flash-based interface. I can enter codes through a desktop widget thingy and just do that most of the time.

Hey, now that you've read all that, would anyone care to guess what Nintendo-branded game system is no longer offered in exchange for Coke Reward Points?

I was a little relieved, to be honest. I could cash out early. End the damage to my liver. Drink mountain spring water and enter into a purification diet of tofu and activated carbon.

But guess what else? They seem sold out of everything in my point range that is the least bit interesting.

They still offer Nintendo stuff, though. This isn't like when the partnership with Sony fell through and all references to them on the website were forever destroyed. They just switched to offering games for one's existing Wii which, in my case, is an imaginary one which fails to play any games at all.

The whole Coke Rewards Conspiracy is weakened by the serving of two masters -- The drive to sell increasing volumes of Coca-Cola and the need to push the products of the sponsor partners, in this case offering rewards which can be used only by people who drop the cash on a new gaming system. Actually, there is a third master -- Nal-Ahnana, Abyssal Dark Queen of Kidney Stones, though her ambitions are not so clearly spelled out on the official website.

Am I quitting? I just twisted the cap off a delicious and vitamin and mineral enhanced Diet Coke Plus (37% of my Vitamin B6 for the day is hidden in there somewhere) so probably not.

But I'm afraid to admit the project has no driving purpose at this point.

I may wait until they re-invent the program again next year and hope for better stuff. I may have built up enough points by then to pick up a red and white striped hybrid SUV (with extra drink holders for even more Diet Coke) or perhaps some kind of super-weapon to strike fear into the hearts of my enemies or anyone who drinks Pepsi or, worse, drinks Coke and discards the codes.

So the current plan is this: I will continue to drink Diet Coke and collect the points. I will hoard them into an ever-increasing heap. I will bide my time and wait for the Coke Rewards people to make a move and then . . . I will cash in my rewards for something entirely unrelated to a T-Shirt featuring the Grand Theft Auto guy from the parody commercial they showed during the Superbowl.

I will purchase no Coke-branded desk lamp or bumper sticker pack to advertise their delicious fizzy and refreshing product line.

I will buy no key chain or wall cover or ring tone.

There will, one day, be something cool. And I will be ready.

I've mentioned them before, but I have to repeat:

If you haven't tried the Starbucks Cinnamon Dolce Latte -- DON'T!
They are highly addictive and a core element of the corporation's latest plot of global domination.
I have tried them, and tried to resist them since. Even my iron will crumbles at the sign of an open Starbucks drive through. Friends, do not fall into their trap.
I've come to realize that this could easily become a $30 per week investment in Starbucks, with no return on my investment save for my own sanity (such as it is).
I have even accidentally contributed to it in more serious ways. Once, after I had apologetically completed ordering a "quad-shot, venti, breve, sugar-free cinnamon dolce latte", the barrista shrieked.
"That's the perfect drink!" I was horrified as she wiped the "Grande Americano" from the "This is your drink" board behind the counter and began to copy my order from where she had scrawled it across the side of my cup.
I knew something needed to be done, and quickly.
I also knew we have our own cappuccino machine at home. Sure, we've worn out a few gaskets so it leaks and it no longer quite heats right, but I'd been given the motivation to attack those issues with the tools at hand (hot glue and a mitre saw, to be specific) to be able to craft our own sugar-free cinnamon dolce lattes at home.
Before beginning the project, I visited Starbucks.com to order a bottle (case) of the flavored syrup. My chest tightened as I came to the realization that while a person can order aprons, grounds dumpers, impossible-to-find coffee plumbing parts and Starbucks-branded toilet paper dispensers, the cinnamon dolce syrup is glaringly unavailable.
I tried to not freak out.
I went to my back-up source, DaVinci syrups. They have everything, the Splenda-based stuff is awesome and they are, arguably, the source for all things flavoring-related.
No cinnamon dolce flavoring there, either.
I even looked under the "new" heading, hoping their web guy was just lazy.
How could this be?
I turned to Google and frantically searched.
Google led me to a forum post by a past (or current) Starbucks barrista who claimed to know the secret.
Cinnamon Dolce flavoring is a combination of cinnamon flavoring (a no-brainer and common enough even in grocery stores), brown sugar (slightly harder to find in liquid sugar-free form, but not impossible) and butter flavoring. Butter is impossible. It doesn't exist as a syrup (because, like, gross) and real butter would congeal and/or rot in the bottle.
Someone on another message board suggested replacing butter flavoring with caramel, but also suggested that this was "not the same".
I've called attention before to Starbuxitol, the secret, highly-addictive non-nutritive additive Starbucks adds to their drinks.
Cinnamon Dolce syrup is that substance, made bold enough to leave out in plain view.
I know I have to solve this riddle, and I know I can do it using DaVinci syrup.
The answer to this mystery, this secret, this "DaVinci Code" is the only thing that can free me, free all of us.